Rishi Sunak will face a challenge to his leadership if the Conservatives suffer heavy losses and lose high-profile mayors in Thursday’s local elections, rightwing Tory rebels have claimed.
Most Conservative MPs believe the prime minister would survive even a terrible set of results on May 2 because there is no viable alternative and a general election is around the corner.
“There will just be sullen grumpiness all round,” said one former cabinet minister.
James Cleverly, home secretary, warned the Tory rebels last Thursday that trying to remove Sunak would be a “catastrophic idea” and compared a putative putsch with jumping out of a plane without a parachute.
But a group of Conservative MPs and ex-officials, including diehard supporters of ex-premiers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, say they will launch one final bid to try to topple Sunak.
Speaking anonymously, the Tory rebels told the Financial Times that a plan has been drawn up to destabilise or oust Sunak once the results of the local elections in England and Wales have been announced.
On Sunday, the rebels threw down the gauntlet to Sunak with a five-point policy plan, setting out proposals to end junior doctors’ strikes with a more generous pay offer, introduce tougher migration measures, increase defence spending to 3 per cent of gross domestic product by 2027, toughen sentences for prolific offenders, and cut the welfare bill.
The plotters set out the 100-day plan as a blueprint of “quick wins” that could be adopted by Sunak’s successor if the rebels manage to successfully topple him.
The threat of a coup attempt has created a febrile atmosphere at Westminster with speculation that Sunak could soon name the date for a general election to head off the danger.
Plotters claim there is a whipping operation to try to muster the 52 letters that must be sent by Tory MPs to Conservative grandees in order to trigger a no-confidence vote in Sunak.
“The polls and focus groups that have gone round show that nothing Rishi does matters,” said one Conservative rebel. “It’s not the policy, it’s the messenger. People just don’t like the guy.”
Sunak repeatedly declined to rule out a July election in an interview with Sky on Sunday. “I’m not going to do that,” he said.
In comments referring to his previous remark that an election in the second half of 2024 was his “working assumption”, he added: “[It’s] the same thing I’ve said all year.”
A Downing Street insider insisted Sunak was still “planning for an autumn election”, dismissing rumours of an early poll as “complete nonsense” being spread by Labour party mischief-makers.
A rightwing Tory MP, who denied being part of any plot, predicted that some in the party would move against Sunak after the local elections and would rally around any alternative would-be leader capable of “stemming the bloodshed”.
“Over the Easter recess, colleagues spent more time on the ground in their seats and got a better sense of how bad things are,” said the MP.
On Saturday, Dan Poulter, the Tory MP for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich and a former minister, defected to Labour.
Many Conservative MPs refer to talk of a possible coup as “mad”, but they accept that Sunak could face fresh Conservative infighting after the local elections.
Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, local elections experts at Plymouth University, have predicted the Tories could lose 500 of the roughly 900 council seats they are defending, which would be a serious setback.
Sunak’s allies are particularly focused on whether the party can win any of the high-profile mayoralties up for grabs – notably London, the West Midlands and Tees Valley.
Sadiq Khan, London’s Labour mayor, is expected to win a third term. But Andy Street, Tory mayor of West Midlands, and Lord Ben Houchen, Conservative mayor of Tees Valley, are in hard-fought battles with Labour.
Tory grandees believe Street and Houchen can prove that Tories can still win — in spite of the party trailing Labour by about 20 percentage points or more in national opinion polls — and that will buy Sunak some breathing space.
The prime minister’s team is doing its best to keep potentially mutinous MPs away from Westminster, where plotting is often rife in the Gothic palace’s corridors and bars.
A May bank holiday recess begins on May 2, with the House of Commons not resuming until May 7. Even after that, MPs expect only “light whipping” for the rest of the week, meaning that some will stay away.
The idea of Tory MPs replacing Sunak with a fourth leader in a single parliament, following Johnson and Truss – and just months before an election – is seen by most Conservative MPs as unconscionable.
The absence of a viable alternative to Sunak is a problem facing the rebels, even if some posit Penny Mordaunt, leader of the Commons, as a compromise candidate.
Mordaunt, who faces a struggle to hold on to her Portsmouth North seat at the election, insists her name is often mentioned by people who want to damage her. “The public are so tired of this,” she has told friends.
Sunak’s allies insist the prime minister’s success in finally securing royal assent for his Rwanda asylum bill, which underpins the government’s strategy to curb illegal migration, and his promise to boost defence spending, has shown he is on the front foot and up for the fight.
Cleverly warned Tory rebels not to “feed the psychodrama”. He told a Westminster press lunch: “We should have the discipline to stay focused on what we’ve achieved in government and what we’re planning to do next.”
One former minister loyal to Sunak said: “There’s no sense that there are anywhere near enough mad MPs to attempt to send the Tory party into the guaranteed death spiral that a sword-wielding leadership upheaval would bring.”
Join Lucy Fisher, George Parker and colleagues for an FT subscriber webinar on May 8 to examine the national fallout from the local elections. Register now at ft.com/ukwebinar.
